


flowering like a ruptured vessel

by couldaughter



Category: Holby City
Genre: F/M, Friendship, Pre-Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-14
Updated: 2018-02-14
Packaged: 2019-03-18 14:47:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,218
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13683843
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/couldaughter/pseuds/couldaughter
Summary: She raised her eyebrows, anyway. “Oh, and you look like you’ve been frolicking through daisies all morning,” she replied. “It’s a long shift, you know.”“Mmm,” Ollie hummed, narrowing his eyes, looking at his hands. There was a faint tremor in the right hand, still, even after weeks of physio, and his left was clawed up. “I suppose it is.”





	flowering like a ruptured vessel

**Author's Note:**

> A Holby Secret Valentines gift! The requested characters were Fletch, Jac and Ollie, and the requested ship was Fletch/Jac, so I've tried to get all of that into the fic.
> 
> I hope everyone is in character; I know Jac and Ollie have known each other a long time canonically but sadly I didn't have time to properly dig into that history while writing this.

Jac Naylor was not used to sympathy.

It wasn’t her style to open up to anybody enough to receive it - crying meltdowns in her office notwithstanding - and she liked to think that she didn’t invite anybody in close enough to require her to give it out, either.

So it was unusual, and a bit discomforting, to be sat by the bedside of Oliver Valentine, a man she had admittedly made miserable on many occasions, and feel a wave of sympathy crash over her, washing away any attempt at a dispassionate distance.

It was just _sad_ , seeing him. He was still Ollie in the most essential sense, at least as far as Roxanna had told her, but there was something fundamentally diminishing about seeing anybody stuck in a hospital bed, least of all the former terror of multiple wards.

They’d been friends, she thought. Hoped. Even if she’d been jealous of his success, towards the end, been determined to undermine him. It was a character flaw, but not one she necessarily knew how to fix.

“You look… pinched,” said Ollie, at length. He’d been studying her in silence for some time, a reaction to Jac’s own steadfast silence, and Jac had to admit that he was right. She was certainly feeling a little pinched, tired out and still recovering from her self-surgery, even after several weeks.

She raised her eyebrows, anyway. “Oh, and you look like you’ve been frolicking through daisies all morning,” she replied. “It’s a long shift, you know.”

“Mmm,” Ollie hummed, narrowing his eyes, looking at his hands. There was a faint tremor in the right hand, still, even after weeks of physio, and his left was clawed up. “I suppose it is.”

Jac was never sure how much of his life Ollie remembered, day to day. She’d been almost flattered that he remembered her after his first surgery, Zosia and Dom and everybody else obliterated by Fredrik’s bullet, but the second had rewritten his memories even further, and he hadn’t shared many particulars with his former colleagues.

To be fair, amnesia probably didn’t inspire as many instant bonds of trust as the medical profession might have preferred - for therapeutic concerns, of course.

“Anyway, I didn’t come all the way up here to talk shop, Valentine,” said Jac, crossing her arms. Her feet were already propped up on a crossbar under Ollie’s bed, a practice which she hated in visitors and tolerated in herself. “What’s the gossip in the spacer ward? Anyone discovered a past life? Had an experience with extraterrestrial life?”

Ollie shook his head. “Nothing s-so exciting, I’m afraid. Too… too interesting for the m-most boring ward in this place.” He shifted, painfully, onto his side, and raised an eyebrow. “How’s Darwin?”

Jac smirked. “Frieda’s enjoying her status as Valentine interpreter; I’ve never seen her with so many hangers on during the shift. Oh, and Fletch’s daughter is still with that boy he tried to stop her dating, I’m impressed by her fortitude in the face of that hang dog look of his.”

She imitated it, eyes wide, and Ollie huffed a laugh before coughing, more violently. 

“Fletch?” Ollie asked, after a swift water break. He raised his eyebrows significantly.

“Oh, don’t you start,” said Jac, feeling a blush creeping up her neck. “Clearly the brain damage is worse than we thought.”

It was a pretty horrible thing to say. That was kind of Jac’s stock-in-trade.

Ollie laughed anyway. “I think you know… just what I mean. I hear things, you know. Lots of things.”

“Dominic Copeland is not a reliable source for my romantic entanglements, Valentine,” said Jac, mentally marking Doctor Copeland for some kind of retribution.

“Not just Dom,” said Ollie, a smirk firmly settled on his face. The left side of his face pulled down just slightly, so he smirked on the right side now. It added something to the expression. “Everyone is on, on,” he paused, casting around for the right word.

“Drugs?” Jac offered.

“Tenterhooks,” he said, with a determined nod. “Tenterhooks, waiting to see if the ice queen will finally m-melt.”

Jac shook her head. “With the NHS in the state it is, you’d think this hospital would have far less time to indulge in rumours and gossip,” she said with an attempt at sternness. “I don’t need to talk about Adrian Fletcher and his- his ties, or his stupid dancing, or whatever else.”

This was a weak defense, she had to admit. Even Ollie could see the gaps in it, and he’d only recently been blind and six months amnesiac.

He was getting tired, though. Sleep was just about the only escape she could imagine from the tarpit of a conversation she’d trapped herself in.

“Sure you d-don’t,” said Ollie. An inquisitive light was in his eyes; he may as well have had a cartoon lightbulb hanging over his head. 

Jac sighed. She supposed it might be worth sacrificing a little bit of her carefully maintained image if it meant Ollie wasn’t about to join the choir invisible out of sheer boredom.

“I stole one of his records, you know,” she said, leaning in with a conspiratorial air. “I would’ve given it back eventually on my own, but then Emma had to go and vandalise it.”

“Emma?” Ollie asked, looking confused.

“My daughter,” said Jac, a sharp pang echoing in her chest. Sympathy. She hated it even more each time. “Anyway, she vandalised the thing and I had to pay someone to fix it up…”

Recounting the full and sordid tale, all the way up to the dance in her office and the mention of a kiss, took about twenty minutes. By the end of it Ollie was visibly drooping, eyelids heavy. He was smiling, though. His verbal responses had faded out about halfway through the story, replaced mostly by yawns and strategic eyebrow raising, but he’d clearly enjoyed the interlude.

Jac stood up, chest only pulling slightly, and saluted Ollie in a sharp, smart gesture. “Must be off,” she said cheerfully. “Enjoy your all-expenses-paid vacation from surgery. I expect to see you back on my team ASAP.”

“Thanks, Jac,” said Ollie, a sad smile spreading on his face like oil on water. “We’ll see, won’t we.”

“That we will,” Jac replied, turning on her heel. 

“Jac?” Ollie called. She paused, didn’t turn back.

“Yes, Ollie?”

“Don’t… waste time. If you don’t have to.”

Jac waved a hand. “Sleep well, Valentine.”

She made it about three strides out of Ollie’s room before bumping straight into Fletch, because of course she did.

“Alright there, Jac?” He asked, steadying her with a warm hand on her elbow. It was doing unpleasant things to Jac’s emotional state.

“Fine, thanks,” she said, tugging her arm away. It felt much colder than it had any right to be, the traitor. “Just been to see Ollie. Catch him up on all the sordid doings around here.”

Fletch grinned. “Oooh, I bet you have. C’mon, a couple of us are going to Albie’s. I’ll spot you a drink if you share some of the gossip.”

Jac rolled her eyes. “I buy my own drinks, Fletch. But yeah, alright. Couldn’t hurt.”

She pulled on her coat, rolled her shoulders. Watched Fletch’s back move as he walked off to fetch his own.

Yeah, alright. Couldn’t hurt.

**Author's Note:**

> Title is from Black Pear Tree by The Mountain Goats & Kaki King, because I just can't stop titling fics after TMG songs.
> 
> Find me on tumblr/twitter @dotsayers! Mostly it's Holby and hockey at the moment, so enter at your own risk. :)


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